Living Outside the Box!

Living Outside the Box – My Daily Bread!

Our call to savor the Lord in our lives is found in Mark 4: 37-41, NIV, which reads:

“A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet, be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to His disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’ They were terrified and asked each other, ‘What is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him!’”

We have all heard of the expression, ‘thinking outside of the box’. This is an expression that hints at the ability to consider all options, to be open to suggestions, not to be narrow-minded; to think out of the ordinary, to develop the ability to see new possibilities and see the world different from the normative perspective. The “box” is the current way of thinking and the current way that things are generally done by the majority of people.

Jesus was certainly an unconventional, out of the box thinker and doer. Oftentimes He challenged what His disciples believed about Him, by the manner in which He responded to their various forms of disbelief. One of the best examples is the story of Jesus and His disciples in the raging sea.

Jesus, the Lord of life and all that lives showed His sovereignty over nature and also showed His disciples something they did not expect. Could the Son of Man control the wind and the waves? Could He save them out of the sea? Remember that the majority of His disciples were sea-faring fishermen! But when experiencing Jesus got down to their day-to-day business, their faith was not sufficient to see the power of Christ! They did not expect that Christ would command the elements that they were most familiar with and save them, ergo their comment, ‘don’t you care if we drown?’ They limited their view of what Jesus was capable of doing for them when their ‘stuff’ was involved. They put Jesus in a box that did not allow them to see His full potential in their lives, and it made them afraid.

Up until this point even though they had seen Jesus perform other miracles, they did not see how He could be miraculous in their lives. Jesus challenged His disciples to not only think outside of the box but also to live outside of the box! He wanted them to be able to see Him from a personal intimate perspective. Like the disciples, Jesus wants us to experience first hand the unlimited possibilities of God revealed in our lives when the storms of life rage all around us; to not be afraid when tossed to and from by the waves of despair. To see Him in our circumstances with the power to move mountains on our behalf!

At these times when great faith is needed, we must have the courage to believe mightily in God and His promises! For when we believe, we open the eyes of our hearts which allows us to see more of God and what He can do! Through our trials, we draw courage to live outside of the box, to live in the Spirit of Christ; “for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4: 17-18, NIV) Through it all be convinced not only that He lives, but that He will be miraculous in your life “because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4, NIV)

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Colleen Holton and Psalms of Praise Womens' Ministry- My Daily Bread, 2011-2017: Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Colleen Holton and Psalms of Praise Womens' Ministry - My Daily Bread, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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